Re: OT (Kind of): Determining whether Locales are left-to-right or right-to-left.

From: David Tooke (dtooke@interproinc.com)
Date: Wed Dec 06 2000 - 14:10:03 EST


> > Is it true that one would not be able set their browser locales to these
> > languages as it appears ISO 639 is a pre-requisite for this?
>
> I do not think that is universally true, no.
>
But according to RFC-1766 that governs the language tags in HTML and in
HTTP, only two character ISO 639 language codes, 'i' tags registered with
the IANA and 'x' private tags are valid.
There seem very few languages registered with IANA and certainly none of the
ones mentioned earlier.
Similiarly, this seems to be the same as far as Java locales is too, they do
not it seems actually validate the language, but from the documentation it
seems that is what is expected. Do you think it is possible that some user
agents could have language strings using (say) the 3 character language ISO
identifiers, i.e. "syr"?

>BTW - I try not answer stupid questions, so you can assume I disagree with
>your characterization since I answered them. :-)
You're very gracious. :-)

David Tooke
dtooke@interproinc.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael (michka) Kaplan" <michka@trigeminal.com>
To: "David Tooke" <dtooke@interproinc.com>; "Unicode List"
<unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 12:37 PM
Subject: Re: OT (Kind of): Determining whether Locales are left-to-right or
right-to-left.

> From: "David Tooke" <dtooke@interproinc.com>
>
> > I noticed from that list that there are quite a few languages that do
not
> > have 2 character ISO 639 codes.
> >
> > Balti Baluchi Berber Hausa Karaite Kurmanji Luri Mazanderani
> > Moplah
> > Pulaar Siraiki (also known as Saraiki or Lahnda or Western Panjabi)
> > Sulu
> >
> > Is it true that one would not be able set their browser locales to these
> > languages as it appears ISO 639 is a pre-requisite for this?
>
> I do not think that is universally true, no.
>
> > plus...
> > dumb question 1. Is Aramaic (which doesn't seem to have a 2 character
ISO
> > code) the same as Amharic (which does...AM)? If not, Amharic appears
to
> be
> > a Semetic language too, is that written right-to-left too?
>
> Amharic uses the Ethiopic script, and is not RTL as far a I know. Aramaic
> has no native speakers (unless you count Hugh Nibley, who reportedly
wigged
> out during a class one day and started lecturing in Aramaic -- witnessed
by
> two people I know among the 50+ in the class!).... so while you may have
> Aramaic content, you probably would not have you machine set to use it as
a
> locale. :-)
>
> > dumb question 2. Are there an known cases where the full locale name
> > (language+country+variant) has a different directionality as for the
root
> > language? I know that some languages are written in different scripts
> > based on the locale; are there any cases where there are a two scripts
> that
> > have the same language code in their locale but differ in their writing
> > direction?
>
> Well, there are some languages in the former Soviet Union that are
> considering an Arabic script either instead of or in addition to existing
> Latin/Cyrillic scripts. Not sure if any have been officially adopted?
>
> BTW - I try not answer stupid questions, so you can assume I disagree with
> your characterization since I answered them. :-)
>
> MichKa
>
> Michael Kaplan
> Trigeminal Software, Inc.
> http://www.trigeminal.com/
>
>



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